a good place to get lost

Bath Abbey at Night

“It’s when you can’t hear the bats, that’s when the bats are coming.” Words on the cover of a birthday card sent by a friend.

Bath Abbey church is a fine example of Perpendicular Gothic architecture. That is what Wikipedia says. I marvel at the magnificent engineering and building of it. And afterwards — all those peasants willed to cast their eyes heavenward to imagine the grandeur of God, while forgetting how poor and, probably, how hungry they were.

I shot this photo nine years ago on a trip to Bath, England. My husband, son, and I were doing the nighttime Bizarre Bath Comedy Tour through downtown Bath. We stopped by the Cathedral while our guide performed a magic trick. Looking up, I imagined those shadowy flying buttresses as stony arms that were daring me to turn my back to them.

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28 thoughts on “Bath Abbey at Night”

Ominous photo, and I doubly Iove your description of how it happened and your imaginings about belfry bats being held by stony buttress arms. I’m so glad to have you “back” writing and photographing, Mary. Cheers.

I actually bought a bat house years ago and had my husband put it in a tree in the hopes that bats would come and eat our mosquitoes. Not one bat has ever put wing to that house. I recently read a comment threat somewhere about bat houses and someone pointed out that the house needs to be rather high, because, of course bats like to hang in high places. Makes perfect sense!

Thanks, Laurie. They do. I’d like to go back and do the Bath tour again. There’s something about exploring an old city like that at night with all that old architecture. Plus, when this photo was taken, our son was 16 and the tour ended at a pub, which we really wanted to enjoy, but we were asked to leave because of our son and his age and the time of evening. Evidently, in England there are variations in the liquor licenses depending on time of day. Our son is now 25 so we’re all set for any variation. And the three of us are headed back to England next May, so you never know.

lovely photo Mary… and a great tour with a magic trick, then the bats… oh how eeery. I always marveled how the old cathedrals were balanced from the outside… that’;s why they were so narrow.. have a great week!

Oh, Clay, you would have loved the magic trick the guy did by the cathedral. It was amazing — tieing a woman’s ring to a baloon and setting it off into the air … which is why I was looking upward in the first place.

As for the cathedrals, the flying buttresses allowed for those magnificent tall windows that let all the heavenly light light into the place.